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Tom Cruise Performs Another Dangerous Plane Stunt in American Made

Tom Cruise is back in the air for another dangerous plane stunt in the upcoming true-life crime thriller American Made. Cruise has proven over and over again that he's an adrenaline junkie when it comes to his action adventure roles. The interesting thing is, the older Cruise gets the more daring he gets, as he gone from hanging off a skyscraper in Dubai in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol to clutching onto the side of a airbound cargo plane in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.

This year, Cruise, who just turned 55 on July 3, subjected himself to 64 takes in a fixed-wing plunging aircraft (aka, "the vomit comet") to film the stunning zero gravity plane crash scene in The Mummy; and apparently another deadly plane stunt is on the way in American Made. Due in theaters September 29, the film stars Cruise as Barry Seal, a real-life TWA pilot-turned-CIA gunrunner-turned-drug smuggler for notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in the 198os.

In an interview withYahoo! Movies UK, American Made director and frequent Cruise collaborator Doug Liman says the actor not only piloted the plane for his scenes in the air, he went as far to abandon the controls to perform other harrowing duties required of him in the story. Liman says filming the scene was "pretty hair-raising," adding:

“Flying extremely fast, small airplanes, low to the ground, is a dangerous environment to be in just on its own. Then, in the story, he’s throwing bales of cocaine out of the airplane, loading them up with guns, so every once in a while in this scene he’s got to climb out of the cockpit and go to the back of the airplane to dump the cocaine out ... “I’m flying alongside him in a helicopter filming, and that made a big impression on me – there’s nobody in the cockpit of the plane! Tom has gone to the back of the aircraft, and he’s alone in that airplane. It’s one thing to have Tom Cruise alone in the airplane flying it – that’s already outrageous – now he’s alone and he’s not even in the cockpit so he’s gone beyond. It was already a stunt before he left the cockpit, it was already a serious stunt.”

While some of Cruise's films land critical acclaim (Ghost Protocol and Rogue Nation) and some don't (The Mummy), there's no question that stunts that Cruise performs on screen are all breathtaking and extremely entertaining. And while it shouldn't come as a big surprise took his stunt game to the limit again with American Made, it is thrilling to learn that in the burgeoning age of visual effects where he could opt for computer generated effects, Cruise is choosing the practical – and very dangerous – route once again.

The great thing is, Cruise is showing no signs of taking the CGI route anytime soon. Mission: Impossible 6producer David Ellison says Cruise has been training for a year for the film’s marquee stunt scene, and since Cruise is reteaming with his Edge of Tomorrow helmer Liman for the film's sequel/prequel, Live Die Repeat and Repeat, the director is bound to turn his star loose once again to take on any death-defying stunt he wants. As for Top Gun: Maverick, it's almost a given that Cruise will be up for anything that will take his stunt game to new heights. After all, Tom Cruise is a red-blooded American made action hero, and fans of his have come to expect nothing short of spectacular from him.